Overtime and Absence costs Queensland Corrective Services $35m - what about your business?

Queensland Corrective Services Minister Joe Francis has raised concerns over “unacceptable” levels of sick leave, overtime and workers compensation amongst prison officers - with overtime and personal leave costing the state close to $35m last year*. 

Organisations need to establish an effective means of measuring and monitoring employee attendance and overtime, particularly across the Public Sector where they are under constant pressure to manage their wage bill more effectively.

Mitrefinch are currently assisting a number of Government and state agencies with their absence and attendance reporting needs, arming them with the information they need to optimise their workforce and eliminate costly overtime and contract labour.

With this information on hand, department heads and managers can quickly identify; how often a worker is absent, how much working time has been lost, if there is a particular pattern forming, and where absenteeism occurs the most (i.e. within a particular department, team). 

An automated Time and Attendance System is a powerful Workforce Management tool designed to accurately analyse employee attendance information and the associated costs. 

By recording unplanned absences and leave, a Time and Attendance System can generate a complete Absence Profile for an individual employee, group of employees, or department, for further analysis. As well as identifying how absence impacts the organisation's overall productivity. 

To help alleviate the problems associated with unplanned absence, in-built employee scheduling and rostering capabilities can help management to plan work schedules and shift cover according to available resources, skill sets, and pre-defined budgets. 

For more information on absence management, attendance recording and time tracking solutions contact the Mitrefinch team today.

* Source: HC Online

Employees crying sick after Anzac Day to cost Aussie Business at least $36 million

The NSW Business Chamber predicts that about 173,000 Australians will pull a "well-known and obvious scam" by taking this Friday off after the Anzac Day holiday. 

Australia celebrates Anzac Day on Thursday April 25th

"It's amazing how many people get 'sick' on a Friday after a public holiday so they can create a long weekend," CEO Stephen Cartwright said in a statement on Friday. His advice to employees who want some extra time off is to plan ahead and talk to their supervisor or manager about booking annual leave*.


In dealing with unplanned absence, it is important for organisations to establish an absenteeism policy and make all employees aware of its content. A company can also gain significant insight into their operation by examining their workforce’s attendance and absenteeism information. 

If the business is small in size they may be able to track employee absenteeism manually. For larger companies this may not be an option, therefore they need to ensure that they implement a time and attendance tracking system that can: 

• Keep an accurate count of individual employee absences 
• Tabulate all employee absenteeism totals 
• Calculate the financial impact that these absences have on the business 
• Detect patterns where absences are particularly high 
• Differentiate between various types of absences 

The Mitrefinch Time and Attendance system can report on an unlimited number of absence codes. Each code represents a type of absence such as annual leave, personal day, sick certified, sick uncertified and bereavement, amongst others.

In addition, managers can keep a check on the percentage of absenteeism by employee, site, location, department and company on a whole, and then determine if an employee is above or below a plant or department average of absenteeism – and take appropriate action. 

The Mitrefinch Time and Attendance system includes a host of other features to assist with absence management and holiday planning including Leave Slots and Self Service tools. 

Leave Slots enable you to limit the number of staff that can book leave on a particular day, ensuring you have the right staffing levels to meet customer or production demands. Web-based Self Service tools make it easy for employees to view their leave balances and book time off, while supervisors can quickly approve or deny requests. 

Continue to our website to find out more information about automated time and attendance systems and absence management. 

*Read the full article on news.com.au

A sign of the times: Rise of Workaholics Anonymous

In this "always-on" society and with smartphone use going through the roof, is it really any wonder that we are breeding a nation of Workaholics?

After widespread success in the US, Workaholics Anonymous has made its way to Australian shores reports The Age Newspaper.

Workaholics Anonymous is a support group in the same vein as its more well-known namesake Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), with groups now up and running in Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide. 

A recent study found people are more likely to experience burnout when they are exposed to continuous stress, long hours, increased workload and a feeling that they have no other work alternative. 

While WorkCover’s 2011-2015 Occupational Disease and Wellbeing Strategy, also reported that the number of claims for occupational diseases in NSW is increasing – with more than 17,000 claims for mental disorders such as work-related stress, anxiety and depression between 2007 and 2010. 

Organisational and industrial psychologist Dr Tim Hill said those with high ambition but a lack of stress management skills are at the highest risk for burnout. 

“If you’ve got a new hire who has a real need to prove themselves in a position that has a relative degree of difficulty, desire to prove themselves can turn into a compulsion – they may lose work/life balance, neglecting their needs if they have obvious behavioural changes, something like depersonalisation can be a strong indicator they’re on their way to burnout.”

Dr Hill also pointed to workplace bullying as a leading cause of workplace stress and burnout saying bullying often flies under the radar and workers sometimes feel reluctant to report it.

Employers are urged to look out for warning signs such as; a rise in absenteeism, increased workplace conflict and cynicism, isolation or detachment from others in the workplace.

An automated time and attendance software system can monitor and track employees’ working hours as well as unplanned absence and leave. By recording absences, a time and attendance software system builds a complete Employee Absence Profile which can be viewed on a weekly, monthly, or annual basis. While a Group Absence Profile allows you to analyse absence for a specific team, department or site.

By measuring the work absences of individual employees a time and attendance software system can identify how these absences impact the organisation’s overall productivity, while real-time reporting allows supervisors and managers to quickly identify potential problem areas and address issues before they get out of hand.

To find out more about how improved Workforce Manangement and Time and Attendance Tracking can help you monitor your employee's work patterns visit Mitrefinch online

Sources: 

Human Capital Online 
The Age - Workaholics down tools to get their lives back  

Check out our other work stress-related blog posts: 

Excessive Overtime may be linked to Depression
Preventable job stress costs economy $730 million annually

Positive relationships and better work/lifebalance 'key to job fulfilment' 

Festive Workforce Management: Leave and Absence Management

In Australia, the combination of Christmas, the School holidays and Summer generally means HR departments across the country are being bombarded with various requests for time off. 

Give your HR Department the gift of Employee Self Service!

How your business deals with these requests can make a big difference to your bottom line - as well as your HR team's mental wellbeing!

A Workforce Management system, with Employee Self Service functionality, empowers your staff to manage their own time and attendance in a controlled, accessible and efficient way.

Employees can view their accrued leave, associated entitlements, and request updates to their personal records without having to bother the time-poor HR department.

A web-based interface could be customised to suit the needs of your complete workforce, handling remote clocking in from desktop PCs, laptops and smart mobile phones. This would enable staff to clock in and out or on and off tasks, appointments and projects, regardless of their physical location.

In the event that department managers are on leave, they can ‘escalate’ their responsibilities regarding approving/declining holiday requests to other supervisors. This ensures that any holiday-related issues are resolved without delay.

Absence Management functionality allows managers or supervisors to enforce minimum notice for absence, and enforce minimum or maximum length for absence – which can be particularly relevant for this time of year – as you need to ensure you have sufficient staff on hand to manage production or customer demands.  

To facilitate improved Absence Management, Mitrefinch have introduced “Leave Slots” into their Time and Attendance System (Mitrefinch TMS).

Leave Slots give managers and supervisors the ability to limit how many employees can be off on a given day or time period - averting potential staffing shortfalls and ensuring you have sufficient staff on hand during times of increased demand – like the  January Sales period for those in the retail industry.

Employee Self Service allows staff to view available Leave Slots online – they will be unable to request leave once all available Leave Slots have been allocated – hence HR won’t need to deal with multiple requests for leave availability etc... 

To find out more about Absence Management, Leave Slots and Employee Self Service visit Mitrefinch online or call 1300 884 831 (+61 2 8762 7888) and put improved Employee Time Management on your Christmas Wishlist today!